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FSO team released Milestone IV 'Homework', see the OpenmokoFramework/Status Update 5. To accomodate the forthcoming release of other FSO API consumers like paroli or the SHR phone stack, three FSO-compliant images are build and released now:

fso-console-image: minimal system with frameworkd, no user interface manager.

fso-image: everything in illume-image plus Zhone. Can be used for phone calls. Like previous milestones. But Zhone is going to be faded out.

Debian: Joachim announced that the preferred installer script is now the one in the git. The old URL does redirect to it. Thanks mostly to Luca “Gismo” Capello’s great work, recent improvements include:

The use of the general auto-login script “nodm” instead of zhone-session. Session configuration can now be done by modifying /root/.xsession.

The use of the packaged kernel instead of wget/tar. To get this going, run apt-get install linux-image-2.6.24-openmoko-gta02

SHR is getting closer to a first milestone release. According to BillK and others who kindly tested the latest version, the ergonomy feels generally better than other distros. But its early days yet, if you need a phone use 2008.9. Julien Cassignol invites the braves out here to install a preview SHR-testing (wiki help) and join the Internet Relay Chat on #openmoko-cdevel on FreeNode.

In the wiki, the Applications and Distributions pages were revised. We are having trouble with an engine extention that eats up whitespace, the workaround is to wrap pre formatted text in

<pre> tags. The thematic List of X applications pages are going away, we want to keep just one big directory style application linkfarm. The idea is that presenting applications in organized ways is better done by http://opkg.org . This directory already has 45 entries, please register and go populate it.

Infrastructure: X and OE

Reports from the optimization team have been landing weekly. They include patches to fix ticket 1884 ([suspend/resume] if press power batton right after suspend, the device won't wake up) and patches to improve the network registering time. The openmoko-mediaplayer2: dependency on pulseaudio was removed to use alsa instead. And various utilities should appear shortly in the distributions, including telnet, wget, tcptraceroute, wmiconfig, a bunch of X system fonts and more.

The lack of GLamo OpenGL is still a major dark hole on the FreeRunner's phone liberation front. Hacker culture factoid: did you know that as a software project X is older and about as large as the kernel with a penguin on it, but has an order of magnitude less contributors to it ?

Wolfgang from Openmoko wrote:If someone wants to seriously develop for the glamo, please get in touch with me and we will find a legally correct way to extend the smedia documentation to you. In fact we have done that in a few cases before already, but I'm not
sure how much actual codes have come out of that. I think very little ;-) So we need some really serious coders that don't mind a tough challenge.

Following that call, several community members expressed interest, and Andy made a few suggestions. Work on 2D/3D acceleration should be coordinated with Graeme (XorA), who is updating the X.org version in OpenEmbeded to 7.4 (it now completely autodetects hardware on GTA02 with the Framebuffer driver). Over the next few weeks he will be working on Xglamo to bring it into the Xorg family of drivers (kdrive is an evolutionary deadend).

Kernel

The kernel guys are working to switch from the stable to the stable-tracking branch. The rationale is that a newer 2.6.28 kernel should improve resume/suspend. And staying closer to upstream allows to spot problems early and one at a time, while branching every X months implies a great effort to jump the gap.

Userspace breakage, especially in /sys, when the kernel jumps from 2.6.26 to 2.6.28.

Hardware

And I thought that we were waiting on Sean et al. to give mechanical legs to the Neo. I was so literally wrong ! (thread).

Werner announced a coming upgrade to the Calypso GSM chip firmware (meanwhile, the wiki is your friend). The goal with the moko9 firmware is to fix ticket 666 and introduce a new command AT+CSIM. Than means 3G SIM cards should work. There will be a self-contained update image that can be copied to a uSD card, then booted from there leading to a simple GUI to kick off the upgrade. Release date given: 'soon'. Fixing registration bouncing is not scheduled for this update.

The GSM-noise buzz issue is a serious defect that make some phones practically unusable. Electrical engineering is black magick to me, but I get that Joerg and other OM hardware engineers have traced which circuit were interfering, and are experimenting hardware fixes. It is unclear how this applies to the A7 hardware revision which seems due soon. Problems with the poor low-frequency audio response with low-impedance headphones are still with us.

Openmoko will share the glamo documentation with any serious programmer out there who wants to improve the glamo driver

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Distributions

FSO team released Milestone IV 'Homework', see the OpenmokoFramework/Status Update 5. To accomodate the forthcoming release of other FSO API consumers like paroli or the SHR phone stack, three FSO-compliant images are build and released now:

fso-console-image: minimal system with frameworkd, no user interface manager.

fso-image: everything in illume-image plus Zhone. Can be used for phone calls. Like previous milestones. But Zhone is going to be faded out.

Debian: Joachim announced that the preferred installer script is now the one in the git. The old URL does redirect to it. Thanks mostly to Luca “Gismo” Capello’s great work, recent improvements include:

The use of the general auto-login script “nodm” instead of zhone-session. Session configuration can now be done by modifying /root/.xsession.

The use of the packaged kernel instead of wget/tar. To get this going, run apt-get install linux-image-2.6.24-openmoko-gta02

SHR is getting closer to a first milestone release. According to BillK and others who kindly tested the latest version, the ergonomy feels generally better than other distros. But its early days yet, if you need a phone use 2008.9. Julien Cassignol invites the braves out here to install a preview SHR-testing (wiki help) and join the Internet Relay Chat on #openmoko-cdevel on FreeNode.

In the wiki, the Applications and Distributions pages were revised. We are having trouble with an engine extention that eats up whitespace, the workaround is to wrap pre formatted text in

<pre> tags. The thematic List of X applications pages are going away, we want to keep just one big directory style application linkfarm. The idea is that presenting applications in organized ways is better done by http://opkg.org . This directory already has 45 entries, please register and go populate it.

Infrastructure: X and OE

Reports from the optimization team have been landing weekly. They include patches to fix ticket 1884 ([suspend/resume] if press power batton right after suspend, the device won't wake up) and patches to improve the network registering time. The openmoko-mediaplayer2: dependency on pulseaudio was removed to use alsa instead. And various utilities should appear shortly in the distributions, including telnet, wget, tcptraceroute, wmiconfig, a bunch of X system fonts and more.

The lack of GLamo OpenGL is still a major dark hole on the FreeRunner's phone liberation front. Hacker culture factoid: did you know that as a software project X is older and about as large as the kernel with a penguin on it, but has an order of magnitude less contributors to it ?

Wolfgang from Openmoko wrote:If someone wants to seriously develop for the glamo, please get in touch with me and we will find a legally correct way to extend the smedia documentation to you. In fact we have done that in a few cases before already, but I'm not
sure how much actual codes have come out of that. I think very little ;-) So we need some really serious coders that don't mind a tough challenge.

Following that call, several community members expressed interest, and Andy made a few suggestions. Work on 2D/3D acceleration should be coordinated with Graeme (XorA), who is updating the X.org version in OpenEmbeded to 7.4 (it now completely autodetects hardware on GTA02 with the Framebuffer driver). Over the next few weeks he will be working on Xglamo to bring it into the Xorg family of drivers (kdrive is an evolutionary deadend).

Kernel

The kernel guys are working to switch from the stable to the stable-tracking branch. The rationale is that a newer 2.6.28 kernel should improve resume/suspend. And staying closer to upstream allows to spot problems early and one at a time, while branching every X months implies a great effort to jump the gap.

Userspace breakage, especially in /sys, when the kernel jumps from 2.6.26 to 2.6.28.

Hardware

And I thought that we were waiting on Sean et al. to give mechanical legs to the Neo. I was so literally wrong ! (thread).

Werner announced a coming upgrade to the Calypso GSM chip firmware (meanwhile, the wiki is your friend). The goal with the moko9 firmware is to fix ticket 666 and introduce a new command AT+CSIM. Than means 3G SIM cards should work. There will be a self-contained update image that can be copied to a uSD card, then booted from there leading to a simple GUI to kick off the upgrade. Release date given: 'soon'. Fixing registration bouncing is not scheduled for this update.

The GSM-noise buzz issue is a serious defect that make some phones practically unusable. Electrical engineering is black magick to me, but I get that Joerg and other OM hardware engineers have traced which circuit were interfering, and are experimenting hardware fixes. It is unclear how this applies to the A7 hardware revision which seems due soon. Problems with the poor low-frequency audio response with low-impedance headphones are still with us.

Openmoko will share the glamo documentation with any serious programmer out there who wants to improve the glamo driver